But one of the great misconceptions of modern life is the assumption that by the magic age of twenty-one we are jelled, dreams in ...place, ready to tackle the adult world and leave childhood behind. All we lack, according to this myth, is experience. The reality is that many of us lack quite a bit more: a psychic passport to adulthood.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Americans living in Latin American countries are often more snobbish than the Latins themselves. The typical American has quite a ...bit of money by Latin American standards, and he rarely sees a countryman who doesn't. An American businessman who would think nothing of being seen in a sport shirt on the streets of his home town will be shocked and offended at a suggestion that he appear in Rio de Janeiro, for instance, in anything but a coat and tie.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Even of old the Christian world, so bitterly antagonistic to any ideas not specifically contained in their creeds and dogmas, made... an exception in Socrates' case. They recognized his likeness to Christ. He was the example that a soul could be Christlike not through grace, but by nature. Erasmus said, "Holy Socrates, pray for us." To know him is a help to knowing Christ, and it is not hard to know him. We can see him quite clearly. Plato who drew his portrait, could not, of course, keep himself out of it, any more than Christ's recorders could, but at least magic did not dog Plato's footsteps as it did everyone's footsteps when the Gospels were written. In the fourth century B.C. Greeks had no leaning to marvels. Also in the centuries that followed no one founded a church on Socrates and built up around him a theology and hung creeds and ceremonials upon him. To see what he was we do not have to brush anything away except a bit of Plato. We can use him as a stepping stone to Christ, a first aid in realizing what Christ was.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

I have never understood why they tried to start the revolution by taking over the universities. It should have been self-evident t...hat the net result of success would be to close the universities but leave the nation unaffected--at least, for quite a long time. Nor do I find it easy to believe that the rebels, as intelligent as most of them were, seriously expected that they could keep the universities alive as corporate bodies, once they had control of them, if they made the fundamental alterations in organization and role that they proposed to.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

One certainly has a soul; but how it came to allow itself to be enclosed in a body is more than I can imagine. I only know if once... mine gets out, I'll have a bit of a tussle before I let it get in again to that of any other.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

"Then you should say what you mean," the March Hare went on."I do," Alice hastily replied; "at least--at least I mean what I... say--that's the same thing, you know." "Not the same thing a bit!" said the Hatter. "Why you might just as well say that 'I see what I eat' is the same thing as 'I eat what I see'!"LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Your rat tail is all the fashion now. I prefer a bushy plume, carried straight up. You are Siamese and your ancestors lived in tre...es. Mine lived in palaces. It has been suggested to me that I am a bit of a snob. How true! I prefer to be.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

[Upon being asked if, in the primitive Hunterdon County, New Jersey, mountain town where she lived, there was "any distinction of ...color" among the residents]: No, not a bit, The niggers and whites all live together. The whites are just as good as the niggers, and both are as bad as the devil can make 'em.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »